


There Would Be Consequences

by Viwiel



Series: Christmas All Around [3]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV), The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: Christmas, Gen, Magic Mishaps, Middle Earth, Prompt Fic, accidental portal jumping, no beta (we die like men)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-16
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:13:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23688232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Viwiel/pseuds/Viwiel
Summary: Getting unceremoniously dumped in Medieval land just before Christmas? There would be consequences - bodily harm kind of consequences.(Or the one where Buffy lands in Middle Earth and has to deal with hiking and tree demons. Demon trees?)
Series: Christmas All Around [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1704685
Kudos: 8





	There Would Be Consequences

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Khiela Cadona (Khiela)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Khiela/gifts).



> Happens before Saruman’s evilness was widely known, the woman was one of Rohirrims, and she set Buffy in the direction of Isengard.

Buffy yanked another leaf out of her hair with a deep scowl.

When she had mentioned in passing about a month ago that it could be nice to spend Christmas in some remote place instead of the city, this certainly was not what she had in mind.

Back then, in her mind she had summoned a scene that was pictured in so many movies. She saw herself with her loved ones in some cute little cabin in the woods. It would be cold outside, and the ground would be covered by high snow drifts, but inside of the cabin would be warm and comfortable. It would have a roaring fire in the fireplace and some candles around illuminating it. They would enjoy the cozy atmosphere, have fun, exchange gifts wrapped in colorful papers…

But no. That didn’t happen, and by the looks of it, wouldn’t happen during this year. She was stuck in some strange dimension; a place called Middle Earth- or was it Centre Earth? She forgot what the woman she had called this place, it wasn’t like she had had stayed for long and chatted about everything. Either way, Medieval Hellscape is what she was calling it in the privacy of her own mind, just Hellscape for brevity’s sake.

Not long after being dumped in this world Buffy had saved a woman from what she assumed were this world’s demons or at least the bad guys. They hadn’t felt quite like demons to her radar, or to be precise, they hadn’t felt like her world’s demons. They did, however, give off a similar bitter, syrupy feel. Additionally, they had tried to murder the woman and, if she understood right, eat her, so she had been forced to do with the slayage.

Afterwards, when she had gotten the woman to calm down, she had inquired the woman if she knew anybody who could wield magic, all the while conscious of the fact that there was a possibility she would be called insane and/or be tossed in a dungeon.

The woman had agreed that there were people like that, and that they probably could help her, but warned that they were scattered around and a distance away. When Buffy had pressured her, she had given her directions to where one of the said wizards resided. She wouldn’t have wanted to let Buffy go, but Buffy hadn’t left her much of a choice, telling she’d miss Christmas if she didn’t get things rolling (that went way over the woman’s head as far as Buffy could tell but it wasn’t worth it to explain). Leaving the confused woman behind she’d left to find one of these wizard guys to send her home.

As she made her way through the bushes and whatnots, it started to bug her she couldn’t remember the name of this place. Something Earth, but what? She frowned. Maybe Middle, like Middle Ages?

After giving it a moment of thought, she shook her head, it didn’t matter what this place was called. Either way, from what she’d seen, it was lacking some things that Buffy felt were essential to her wellbeing; central heating, showers and indoor plumbing just for a start. Not to mention, it didn’t even have Christmas! And she was betting Hanukkah was completely unknown concept to these people as well.

If and when she found the person responsible for the gigantic mess of sending her here she would be arranging a very public execution, possibly preceded by creative forms of torture. 

That was, once she found someone to send her home or Willow would be alerted and would do her thing to fetch Buffy home from this hell hole.

Never did she think she would someday actually miss the Hellmouth. It’s a wonder what being soaking wet and struggling one’s way through a piece of vengeful landscape could do to one’s perspective.

She smacked a creeping tree branch away with a dark look. “Try something and you’ll be a pile of wood chips,” she threatened the old looking tree. She was positive these trees weren’t just some run the mill vegetation; several had tried to have at her in ways that couldn’t be mistaken for anything else than attempts on her life – normal tree roots didn’t rise up to trip you and tree branches usually required wind to shift. She had a preliminary theory that they were some kind of breed of tree demons. Demon trees? Thankfully, after she had gone through one of her threats, they had laid off a little and seemed to hesitate before making any kinds of moves on her.

It was now getting even darker than before, and that was saying something. There were probably caves that had better lighting that this forest did. It seemed like all light got swallowed by the canopy before it made it to the forest floor.

Suddenly, her eyes picked up sounds around that stood out from the otherwise muted sounds of the forest. It was a distinct sound of somebody walking and it came from her right.

Considering she was armed, she deemed there was no harm in revealing her position to that someone. Besides, it wasn’t like they weren’t aware of her as well. Sounds from of both of their walking were easy to distinguish, not to mention there was a possibility they’d heard her cursing moments ago.

“Who’s there?” she surveyed the direction the sounds had come from.

“Hello,” the greeting was delivered in a genial tone as the person, emitting soft light all the while, stepped away from the trees that had concealed him from her eyes. He was a tall, lean man with long white hair and beard, dressed in white robes. He had a long staff in his hand.

“Hi?” her answer to his greeting came out more like a question as she looked at him. He reminded her of Harry Potter movies’ Dumbledore or Santa Claus, although in her imagination Santa was- well, built heavier than this man.

“I’m Gandalf the White,” he introduced himself. “You’re not one of this world,” he stated with certainty after studying her.

“Nope, I’m not from around here. I’m Buffy Summers. There was a mess with portals and I got send in this dimension.”

“A traveler from far away, then.”

“Yes. At first I was resigned I’d have to wait till Willow- my friend who is a witch, grabs me, but then I found out there’s wizards in this world, and that they might be able to help me,” there was an edge of nervous babbling to her explanation and she told herself to get it together.

The account got her a solemn nod, “Whoever you talked with was right; we are capable of helping you.”

“You’re a wizard?” her eyebrows rose. What was the likelihood of that? Then again, the staff and robe was very fantasy novel kind of magic user ensemble.

“Yes. You say your friend is capable of feats like reaching across dimensions like that?” he studied her face intently.

“Yup,” Buffy confirmed, Willow kicked ass in that way.

“She’s quite powerful then. Perhaps it’s wiser to let her reach you. It is somewhat easier to reach out for someone than it is to send someone somewhere. Especially, if the place you are trying to send someone is unknown to the sender.”

“That makes sense – I think,” Buffy considered what the old man was trying to explain to her.

“Say, if she hasn’t reached you in three days’ time, I’ll do my best to send you back to your world. If that is agreeable to you?”

“Sure, sounds like a plan,” Buffy agreed. She wasn’t thrilled about spending her holidays in this place, but what he proposed was reasonable.

“You’ll have to travel with me to for that time, however. I have places to be,” he informed her.

Buffy nodded, it wasn’t like she thought he lived here in woods. For one, keeping his robes that white had to be a pain in the ass…

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: 
> 
> Fandom(s): Lord of Rings & optional second fandom  
> Quote: “Everybody wants to go back to nature – but not on foot.” –Werner Mitsch


End file.
